The Press Freedom Index:
USA is 46th!
Well this is silly.
It relies on a questionnaire returned by journalists.
In a nation with very aggressive freedom of speech culture, the respondents are the most likely to complain bitterly. With a more restricted view, the respondents are less likely to complain.
The issue at hand is a perfect example. A respondent from the UK might think it’s personally reasonable to erase the past. One from the US would be outraged at this ridiculous re writing of history, and the way a law against it suppresses freedom of speech.
Which one is going to think “freedom of the press” has been violated when he gets that questionnaire?
The concept of “free speech” in the US is so aggressively wide that it tends to horrify other nations. The idea that we are 46th in international rank is beyond ludicrous, although I have no trouble we complain enough to have someone think we are really suppressed.
A Google search is no more a “publication” than is the result returned by a “searchable database.” That’s exactly the kind of thing where a 1984 doublespeak creeps in once you start to restrict truth.
I doubt your reasoning. Freedom of the press is not just de jure but needs to be seen in terms of the actual outcome. Any person living in Western Europe and visiting the US is aware that the Press in particular (and TV to a certain level) allows you the best media that money can buy. In any town in the UK I can read daily papers available on every news-stand expressing support for Neo-Stalinist through to neo-liberal policies. In the US, once I leave the large conurbations, all Newspapers are uniformly right wing. Even with TV, 24 news is not only a problem with Fox being massively skewed rightwards, but also even the main channels being filled with petty local and national news following a particular agnda, but little real coverage of the rest of the world.
So what you have is a right to licence for free speech which is potentially a breach of rights to privacy (don’t forget that SCOTUS based Roe vs Wade on that issue) but also gives you the best press that oligarchs can buy. Similar arguments go for real democracy against individual democracy with the laws allowing you the best government that money can buy.
There is a difference between intent and the law, and the result in real life. Most unbiased people would question whether US Laws on Free Speech and Elections are a beacon for the world when they look at the actual result.
In your humble opinion a Google search is not a new publication. In European Law it is. There are varying opinions as to what a publication is and is not and neither you, nor the US legal system, is the deciding factor in different jurisdictions.
You posted both of these – count that, both of 'em – upon copy-and-pasting me saying “Show me the study and I’ll gladly tell you what else the US should be doing”.
Did you somehow miss what you copy-and-pasted, right as you were replying to it? What you wrote goes past ‘irrelevant’ and all the way over to ‘anticipated’ --as if you were showing what it looks like to, uh, ‘forget’ old internet content, or something.
Whether the US could learn something from other nations – as was already noted in the post you copy-and-pasted – has nothing to do with whether this policy happens to be one of those shining examples of how we could be better. And, as it happens, no, punishing truthful free speech as defamation simply ain’t one of those.
The Democratic world consists of many countries ranging over all continents and all races. Different countries have decided different balances between different sets fo rights. The US happens to be an outlier on many of these. The US way of doing things is neither necessarily the best anor the only way of being a modern democratic country. It is an illusion to believe that one nation has been so clever as to come up with the ideal manner of Government. The only such country that I know where the majority view seems to be that there way is the only way is the USA.
The rest of us get on quite well with the idea that there are few absolutes and many shades of difference and different jurisdictions value different rights in different ways.
It seems that Google will comply and is setting up a system to deal with this new requirement to meet the EU laws on personal data.
The reasoning behind the judgement is quite clear and is similar to the wording of the UK Act on rights to priuvacy.
Basically if any dataholder in the UK has personal information stored in an automated record keeping system, they have responsibilities to individuals and the state to only use that information within the law.
As Google is an automated record keeping system it must comply with the law.
One of the criteria is that anyone who collects data and stores it in a retrivable system must ensure that the information is correct and that they have a right to hold such personal information for reasonable use. Google has little right to hold such information in order to carry out its business, and so must remove anything that is incorrect or not needed for its business.
This is designed to stop organisations from gathering and providing to others personal information that people would rather keep secret. It does not affect the press should they be collecting the information for a story or other investigation, but would affect an employer if they were collecting irrelevant information about their employees.
Yes, you’ve once again copy-and-pasted my remarks about how we could be doing things better, and then – spent rather a lot of time and effort making the same point. I gotta ask: why do you even bother with the copy-and-paste, if you’re just going to follow it up with a hectoring reply that would fit a copy-and-pasted claim making the exact opposite point?
Why not just skip to this next part:
Yes, well, perhaps the rest of you do get on quite well by discarding the value of truth as an absolute defense against slander; I wouldn’t know, since – upon so discarding the value of truth – what grounds can be appealed to?
The right to Free Speech is not absolute in the USA. How do you justify the exceptions allowed under US Law and practice?
Iran, Russia, China, Pakistan, North Korea, Cuba all come to mind. But that’s just off the top of my head.
Regardless, even the modern US does not make free speech and journalism absolute. Journalistic ethics require that the subject of the journalism be of legitimate value and interest to the public. If a journalist were to publish that time you farted in the tub in an attempt to maliciously humiliate you, in that the information is of no value or relevance to the public, you would have a valid complaint.
The real issue is with realistic enforcement. Some of the afforementioned countries have done a very thorough job of making sure the internet “forgets” things that they would rather not have people know. How do we clean up the cobwebs of old Tweets and drunken Facebook pictures without opening the door to malicious censorship or deleting material of genuine value, I do not know.
The same way other countries do, I expect – at which point it seems they go an unconscionable step further. And so I can’t hide behind ‘free speech’ while engage in false advertising, just like I can sign away my right to speak about a given matter with a confidentiality agreement – but this isn’t like those.
It is truly amazing that perfection in this area of Human Behaviour has occurred only in the Law and Practice of one nation in the whole of Human History.
And that nation would be the cause of the
The Alien and Sedition Acts
Sedition Acts
The Miller Test
The Espionage Act
which all seem to negate the First amendment by any serious reading, despite what SCOTUS found.
Ypu are of course entitled to your opinion that The Free Press in the US is the epitome of civilisation. Obviously the majority of the civilised world disagrees as it has chosen to balance rights differently.
“such country” referring to Democratic countries referred to throughout the paragraph…
The finding does not apply to Tweets or Facebook, only to searchable databases which are restricted under European law.
But that’s not my opinion.
You’ve been told – repeatedly – that it’s not my opinion.
You were told it wasn’t my opinion before you attributed it to me.
You’ve copy-and-pasted me saying it’s not, and you’ve then stated the opposite.
I merely add that punishing truth as slander is not one of the ways we could improve the American system. I freely grant that there are ways to improve our system; I merely (a) claim this isn’t one of them, and (b) await your next, uh, ‘restatement’ of my position.
Your mistake is assuming that Truth is absolute. Truth is in competition with Decency and Lawfulness, Privacy and State necessities- all of which have been used by the US in its own interpretation of its proud boast of Free Speech/
Limiting the truth is not punishing it as slander.
In the European case, Truth has to be weighed against privacy rights which is a different matter
Of course it’s in competition with capital-L Lawfulness! The entire point of this thread is that a government can pass a Law that forbids truthful speech!
That’s not my mistake. Your mistake is saying that’s my mistake.
Well, not necessarily, no. But in this case, speech can be punished – and when the defense of But-That’s-The-Truth is raised, punished regardless. Which is wrong.
I mentioned false advertising upthread, and I’m curious as to how the law you favor would apply in the following situation: imagine there’s a guy who puts out ads proudly proclaiming that he’s been in the housepainting business for thirty years and has never received a complaint from a customer.
And imagine that I’m the heroic journalist who writes up a truthful article about the guy: twenty-nine years ago he painted a house pink instead of the agreed-upon blue, and refused to refund his pay, and got taken to court. And twenty-eight years ago, he got caught swiping jewelry from a house he was painting; they pressed charges and he was convicted. And twenty-seven years ago, he showed up late and drunk for a job, and belligerently refused to leave, which is why the homeowners had the cops arrest him. And et cetera.
I publish that story in the US; what happens? I publish it elsewhere; what happens?
What, exactly, is “decency”? What is the term’s objective meaning?
It’s hardly the court’s fault if your friends don’t know how the Internet works (though I’ve never seen a browser with “no URL line”.) Anyway, by your logic Google has become a de facto content provider and is therefore liable for whatever its search engines turn up. I’m pretty sure they don’t want to make that argument (and as a Google user I certainly don’t.)